The present application corresponds to French application Serial No. 99.09923 filed Jul. 30, 1999, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a process for recycling wooden pallets.
Because of the widespread use of handling trucks, it has become common to place products or merchandise on wooden pallets. There are therefore millions in circulation, of all sorts and sizes. It frequently happens that they are more or less damaged or of an unmarketable size in that condition and a large quantity of pallets is discarded although they could be repaired or redimensioned, because their repair cannot be easily carried out, requiring a large amount of hand labor and hence too great a cost.
The process according to the invention consists in:
carrying out manually a first sorting between pallets easily saleable after repair or truing, and those which must be completely disassembled; those which can be sold after repair or truing being deposited on a conveyor that brings them to a repair station and the others being deposited on another conveyor which brings them to a disassembly station;
then in the disassembly station, cutting up each pallet by separating from each other by sawing the different layers constituting the pallet (border, cross-pieces, base, blocks, beams) such that all the elements will be separated from each other;
then in a sorting station, sorting said separated elements as a function of their size, bringing them by sawing to a certain number of standard dimensions when they are too long, discarding those which are too greatly damaged; these operations being carried out automatically by robots provided with feelers and optical detectors;
then storing in piles, by means of an automated conveyor, said elements as a function of their sizes;
then using the elements thus stored either to repair damaged products in a repair station, or to reconstruct new pallets in a reconstruction station.
An installation for practicing the process according to the present invention is characterized by the following arrangements:
a) the repair station comprises: a truing by sawing station, in which the constituent elements of the pallet can be individually separated; as well as a sawing station in which the peripheral elements are cut without being disassembled from each other.
b) the disassembly station comprises a table provided with a plurality of sawing means traversed successively by the pallet in the course of disassembly.
c) the repair station and the reconstruction station are supplied by means for distributing products from the storage station.
d) preferably, the distribution means is disposed between the repair station and the reconstruction station and is supplied from the storage station, by automated conveyor means.
e) also preferably, a station for new products is disposed adjacent the distributor so as to make up a possible shortage of recycled elements.